The Dean of the theology department at Harvard University, Harvey Cox, retired recently. Religion and Ethics Newsweekly reported the event and did an interview with this man of letters and long experience. He's been a teacher with his finger on the pulse of the body of world religions for decades. and he's written a book, "The Future of Faith".

Cox commented about religion's progress over the last fifty years. He declared:

"The resurgence of religion around the world and the various religious traditions, which is unexpected, globalóthere were people who were predicting the marginalization and even disappearance of religion in my early years as a teacher. That disappearance, that marginalization did not happen. Itís a basic change in the nature of our civilization. It will continue."

He decried materialism in the interview, but he is positive in his outlook:

"The change that Iíve seen is the enormous growth in the hunger and interest in religion and spirituality among students at this university. Itís phenomenal. When I first came here we didnít even have a religious studies program at Harvard College. I notice increasingly among my students, both undergraduates and students in the divinity school, a deep suspicion of this life of accumulating, consuming, to the soul, the dangers to the soul of consumerist values. Let me tell you that the urge to graduate from college, like this one, and immediately go down to a Wall Street investment firm is greatly shrunken this year from what it was last year."